Seaside Sessions
A shell by the shore will be the soundbox and the stage for Seaside Sessions, a new concert series in Miami Beach being put on by the musical adventurers of South Beach’s Rhythm Foundation.
The first of three concerts in South Florida’s sweet season takes place on January 16 at the North Beach Bandshell on Collins Avenue with headliner Marco Benevento and special guest Brika. The inaugural series continues on January 23 and 30 at the oceanside amphitheater, which was also the setting for this past year’s edition of Rhythm Foundation’s long-running Heineken TransAtlantic Festival.
Seaside Sesssions is a more relaxed affair, with a less-compressed lineup spread out over consecutive Saturdays. But it’s got the promoter’s hallmark: smart, eclectic music with wordly flair and an outgoing, social spirit. Rhythm Foundation shows are a far-flung collector’s record crate brought to life on stage.
Benevento, from Brooklyn, kicks off the series on the 16th with a kind of reinvention — of himself. Known as a champion of exploratory, jazz-minded instrumental music, the keyboardist and founder of Benevento/Russo Duo and Garage a Trois has put out a solo album, Dropkick, that finds him singing boyishly over the danceable, indie-pop soundscapes he ventures under his own name.
It is no small thing for a career instrumentalist to suddenly find his singing voice. Like the lineup of his homegrown record label, Royal Potato Family, Benevento is agreeably tough to classify. He delights in opposites, making music that manages to be heavy and airy all at once.
Brika, from Miami, is a 21st Century chanteuse with a sultry, bending contralto and the skill to adapt it to varied material. On her album, Voice Memos, this pop omnivore sings with a flow whose heart belongs to hip-hop and soul. At almost 1.2 million SoundCloud plays for the Voice Memos track, Expectations, Brika is also making noise well beyond her Miami base.
The January 23 concert is headlined by New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott — a formally trained jazz musician and bandleader with a fusionista’s impulse to tap other genres. “Sonically, they’re really wide,” Scott says in a video interview discussing his albums, including his latest, Stretch Music. The album mixes a classic, mid-century Miles Davis palette with funk, soul, EDM and jazz fusion of the latter-day Miles variety. Call it metafusion.
Also playing on the 23rd is the remarkable Hailu Mergia, whose journey to a breezy open-air gig in Miami Beach in 2016 is the longest and most unexpected of all the performers. Originally from Ethiopia, Mergia was driving a cab in Washington, D.C., when a globe-trotting music fanatic traveling in Africa found a cassette of Mergia’s music and arranged to re-release them worldwide.
Mergia, a bandleader playing keyboards and accordion, is a fit with the 20th Century Afrobeat vanguard led by Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. But where Kuti’s music was more thunderous and elemental — and political — Mergia is more psychedelic and hallucinatory. “Trip” is one way to describe and experience the airy, jazz-tinged grooves and strange, rippling keyboard lines of Tche Belew, or Mergia’s immersive acoustic-electronic adaptions of Amharic — classical Ethiopian — music.
Opening for Scott and Mergia, Aaron Lebos Reality is a fusion ensemble led by South Florida guitar virtuoso Aaron Lebos, heir to a sonic tradition blazed by the likes of Chick Corea and the late, revered South Florida bassist Jaco Pastorius. Lebos expands on the model with tracks such as “Flux Capacitor” that wire rock and funk into the classic fusion motherboard.
Seaside Sessions No. 1 wraps on January 30 with DRKWAV, a pick that also circles back to the first concert in the series. An instrumental trio with an ambient sound, DRKWAV records for Benevento’s Royal Potato Family label. One band member, saxophonist Skerik, also jams with Benevento in Garage a Trois.
Skerik, drummer Adam Deitch and keyboardist John Medeski execute a kind of bell dive into pure audio on DRKWAV’s album, The Purge. Some listeners might also hear traces of earlier work done by former Medeski, a Pine Crest School of Boca Raton alumnus who moved to New York and won acclaim as a member of the avant-jazz trio Medeski, Martin & Wood.
Opening for DRKWAV is Aroze Troubadou, specialists in the rhythmic and melancholy sweetness of haitian konpa (or compas). These South Florida mainstays are led by Jean Levelt Vital, who anchors this distinctly West Indies group with his supple voice and acoustic guitar playing.
The Seaside Sessions concerts are January 16, 23 and 30 at North Beach Bandshell, 7275 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach. All shows are 7 to 11 p.m. Advance tickets are $25 per show. Gate admission is $30. A full series pass is available for $50. Children under 6 are admitted free. Visit http://www.rhythmfoundation.com/series/seaside-sessions/ or call (305) 672-5202
~ Sean Piccoli
